Follow-up Q&A on Nexus 1000V Free-mium Pricing Model

We’ve had a great response to our announcement earlier today about the free Nexus 1000V Essential Edition. After seeing all the comments and questions, there are probably a couple of implementation details I should point out:

Existing Nexus 1000V Customers Will be Upgraded to the Advanced Edition

If you are an existing Nexus 1000V customer, you will be upgraded to the Advanced Edition in the next release, not the Essential Edition. One of the nice things about this is that Nexus 1000V customers that were not using the Virtual Security Gateway (VSG) firewall will get it for free as part of the Advanced Edition, along with the other new Advanced Edition features, at no charge.

VSG is Free for Existing Nexus 1000V Customers Today

In preparation for VSG to be included with the Advanced Edition, all new Nexus 1000V orders starting now will include VSG as well at no cost. Existing Nexus 1000V customers can contact their account managers to get a one-time free license for VSG to use with the current Nexus 1000V release prior to upgrading to the new 2.1 release.

Non-Nexus 1000V Customers Can Download Free Software Today and Get Started

If you are not one of the 6,000+ customers using the Nexus 1000V today, but you want to get going now that you know the Essential Edition will be free when released, you can download the trial version of the current release 1.5.2 from here (requires registration on Cisco.com) today. By default, the trial version will function for 240 days without any license packs installed for up to 512 CPU sockets on up to 64 servers. You will then be able to upgrade to the Release 2.1 Essential Edition before the 240 day period expires. The other option is to start today with the beta version of the new 2.1 release by leaving a comment below and we’ll enroll qualified customers into the beta program. [Update: Due to heavy demand, we have cut off adding new people to the beta program at this time.]

A Software Support Agreement is Not Required

As we noted, the Nexus 1000V Essential Edition is no charge, but there is a nominal annual charge per CPU socket for software maintenance. This is not required, and customers can run without support if desired, and the nominal support fee only kicks in if elected.

We appreciate all the feedback, tweeting and questions that have been coming in! I hope this clarifies some of the initial questions we’ve been getting. For further information there is also a more detailed FAQ document here.

The beta has ended and the software is now shipping. It can be downloaded from:
http://www.cisco.com/cisco/software/release.html?mdfid=282646785&flowid=3090&softwareid=282088129&release=4.2(1)SV2(1.1)&relind=AVAILABLE&rellifecycle=&reltype=latest

We've already made the product free. Unless I'm missing something, a Not For Resale license is probably not necessary. There will even be free trial versions for the Advanced Edition if that's needed for demos.

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